MIRABEL – Morgan Pressel is confident her golf will get to where it should be before the season ends, but she also wants to regain the kind of self-assurance she displayed as a young phenom when she first hit the LPGA Tour.

Pressel won the 2007 Kraft Nabisco Championship at Mission Hills to become the youngest winner of a modern LPGA major at age 18 years and 313 days.

In 2005, after having just turned 17, she shared a three-way tie for the lead going into the final round of the U.S. Women’s Open at Cherry Hills, where she was forced to settle for tie for second with fellow amateur Brittany Lang after seeing South Korean Birdie Kim hole out a shot from a green-side bunker for birdie and, eventually, a two-stroke victory.

And in 2001 at age 12, Pressel was the youngest player to qualify for the Women’s Open, a record that stood until 2007, when fellow American Alexis Thompson bettered the mark by a few months.

As a teenager, Pressel’s quick rise in the game surprised many, but not her because attitude had as much to do with it as her ability to hit a golf ball.

“I was cocky,” Pressel told The Gazette on Tuesday. “When I won at such a young age I was there to win. When I won in 2007 and nearly won the Women’s Open when I was 17, I knew that I could do it.

“In sports, there definitely needs to be a sense of cockiness,” Pressel said. “It sounds like a terrible word to say, but you have to be confident. You have to have tremendous confidence that you can win, even if you’re 17 or 18. Confidence that you can beat everybody else, even though you don’t have that much experience

“It’s almost healthy that young audacity … to feel no nerves and feel like you can steamroll everybody else just because you can,” she said. “I need to get a little bit of that back.”

Pressel, now 23, is one of the 156 players in the field for the $2.25-million U.S. CN Canadian Women’s Open that starts Thursday at the Hillsdale Golf & Country Club north of Montreal.

The Tampa, Fla., resident is almost three years removed from her last Tour victory, the 2008 Kapalua LPGA Classic.

She’s won only twice since joining the Tour in 2006, but she did add the World Ladies Championship Salonpas Cup, a major on the LPGA of Japan Tour, to her resumé last year.

Pressel also finished second at this season’s third major, the Wegmans LPGA Championship at Locust Hill in late June, a result she said “felt like a win” despite finishing 10 shots behind world No. 1 ranked Yani Tseng of Taiwan, who also went on to win last month’s RICOH Women’s British Open and, at 22 years, six months is the youngest player, male or female, to win five golf majors.

Tseng, with four wins this season and nine since her first season on Tour in 2008, is the Tour’s “next best thing,” which was how Pressel and Canadian Women’s Open defending champion Michelle Wie were described when they burst on the scene.

Yet, despite being young and facing big expectations, Pressel never felt added pressure because of it.

“The idea of me being ‘the next big thing’ has maybe come and gone, which is kind of weird because I’m only 23,” she said. “But I have been on the Tour for six years and all the pressure that I feel is just what I put on myself.

“I’m very hard on myself, sometimes to a detriment. But I really want to play, I want to win and when I don’t I’m not too happy,” Pressel said. “It’s only natural to be disappointed with poor play. The hard part is when I accept good play and don’t enjoy it.

“You have to enjoy the good and the bad, so when I do play well I try to feel good about that instead of just accepting it. I try to not dwell on the bad so much.”

At 15, Pressel lost her mother, Kathy Krickstein, to breast cancer in September 2003. After her death, she moved in with her grandparents, Herb and Evelyn Krickstein, while two younger siblings stayed with her father.

The Kricksteins are the parents of Aaron Krickstein, a former tennis player who played on the ATP Tour from 1988 to 1996, and previously held the record as the youngest player to win an ATP singles title at age 16 and two months.

Pressel said the loss of her mother continues to drive her to excel.

“It’s always there. It’s not something that’s going to change or go away,” she said. “I’ve tried to turn it into a positive, hosting fundraisers every year.

“We’ve raised almost $2 million,” Pressel said of her Morgan & Friends Fight Cancer Tournament played at the St. Andrew’s Country Club in Boca Raton. “It’s been an unbelievable ride to be able to give back to the community that helped my mother battle her illness and to the people who are battling now and those who may battle it in the future.

“It maybe me (eventually), so I’m almost preparing for my future,” she said. “We’re just trying to take steps, trying to really turn it into a positive and leave a good legacy for her.

Pressel, 12th on the season money list with $624,725 earned after 14 events and 44th on the career list with just over $4.171 million, is making her sixth appearance in the Canadian Women’s Open. Her best result was a tie for second two years ago at Priddis Greens in Calgary and she’s never missed the cut.

Pressel said the tournament is one she always looked forward to.

“The Canadian Open has always been a very special tournament for me, one that I’ve played well in a few times,” she said. “I enjoy coming and meeting the Canadian crowd, which comes out in bunches no matter where we play.

“It’s always one of our greatest crowds of the year and the fans are very knowledgeable. They know golf and love golf,” Pressel added. “They love hockey and I love hockey, too, so it works out.”

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